The Girl in the Gilded Cage

Week #2 of 3.

The original script is by Carlton
E. Morse, copyright 1986/1992with
excerpts from the original.

The synopsis is written by
Harold M. Hart,original
material copyright 2000.

Episode 6(Thursday
September 6th, 1951)

SOUND:(Clock strikes Seven)

“Hold on,
there!”shouts the farmer, as two of the enemy agents get out of
their sedan with the object of searching his hay wagon.Without hesitating a moment, the man with the German accent pulls out a revolver
and fires two shots into the farmer’s body.

He falls to the roadway, dead.Just
then, a motorcycle policeman is seen coming down the road from the direction of
Tracy.

MAX:A cop is coming!Men, get
that farmer’s body into the car!We’re
taking it with us!

And doing so, the killers in their sedan
screech off in the other direction.

Brushing
the hay off hisclothes,Jack climbs into the driver’s seat on the wagon.He hails the motorcycle cop, who pulls up.

JACK
(shouting):Hey, officer….did you
see that car that just went over the hill?Well, there were three men inside it, and they had the body of another
man!They stopped to ask me if this
was the road toFresno.”

The policeman is suspicious of Jack’s
story, and threatens to return and lock Jack up if his story turns out to be
false.The cop then takes off in
hot pursuit of the sedan.

Doc and Lee Ming join Jack up front on
the driver’s seat.The three
continue their journey on the wagon.

DOC
(wondering aloud):“Well, Lee
Ming, if the enemy are so anxious to have you dead and Uncle Sam’s undercover
boys are givin’ their all to keep you alive, then you must have a HONEY of a
secret.”

LEE
MING:If I have, I do not know
what it is.

Doc and Lee Ming continue conversing
about their common plight, while Jack is silently pondering thesituation.As they enter the outskirts of Tracy, Jack suddenly barks an order to the
others to getoff the wagon quickly.He has seen the motorcycle cop speeding up behind the wagon.

JACK:Come on….quick!Duck into
this yard!And back behind this
house!

Jack tells Doc and Lee Ming to stay
inside a shed, while he leaves to look for a car, as the hay wagon canbe
easily spotted by the police.In a
while, Doc and Lee Ming hear a sound on the roof of the shed.A young boy jumps down and runs off.Now, someone knows where they’re hiding!Just then, Jack drives up in an old jalopy.

JACK
(shouting):Pile in…hurry!….now
we’ve not only got the enemy looking for us, but the whole blamed police
force!

ANNOUNCER:Two o’clock in the damp, fog-shrouded morning of the East Bay
waterfront.Not only the Arm of the Law, but the sinister, clutching hand
of the enemy has been reaching out through the highways and by-ways, feeling
through the night for Jack and Doc and the Chinese girl, Lee Taw Ming.Just outside of Tracy a farmer was killed.He was needlessly shot down by the enemy, but the police don’t know
that.They only know that Doc and
Jack were in the vicinity;thus the
intensive search by the law.The
enemy want Lee Ming, the eighteen-year-old Chinese girl, dead or alive!As disguised agents for the government Jack and Doc have got her safely
this far….to the waterfront on the Oakland side of the bay.

All day they hid
out and traveled the back country roads in safe, easy stages, in an old jalopy
which wasn’texactly their own.And now, at two o’clock in the soggy, dripping dead of the morning,
Jack parked the heap in the shadow of a warehouse and the three alighted and
tiptoed along the cobbled paving like furtive ghosts.

SOUND:(Splash and slapping of bay against dock.Tiptoed footsteps on cement.)

DOC
(quietly):I wish you’d tell us
where we’re a-goin’ and WHY, Jack.

JACK
(just above a whisper):Keep your
voice down, Doc…

In a guarded voice, Jack tells his two
companions that he is taking them to Cockney’s.Doc explains to Lee Ming that “we done time with Cockney in
a Central American jail once upon a time.”Cockney now runs a waterfront saloon on bayside in Oakland.

Lee Ming asks why they are stopping there, rather than crossing the
bridge into San Francisco, their goal.Doc
explains that the Bay Bridge is “practically crawlin’ with cops, and as for
the enemy, we’d have walked right into somebody’s trap for sure.”

Jack decides to go ahead to brief
Cockney and to ask him to let them all slip in the back way.Shortly, Jack returns to the others and the three head for
the back door of the saloon.

SOUND
(rising):Water slapping against
wooden dock.)

LEE
MING:The bay is very close,
isn’t it?

DOC:Yeah, the back end of Cockney’s gin mill hangs out over the water.

As they start to enter, two shots ring
out.The three dash indoors.Lee Ming bursts into tears.Doc
notices that one bullet has cut through her coat and dress.He tries to comfort the girl.

LEE
MING (crying): I do not know why they want to kill me!It is not fair!If I have
done wrong….

Doc sees that Lee Ming has a locket on a
chain.The bullet apparently broke
the chain.She asks Doc to keep it
in his pocket.Cockney appears,
greets his old friends, and meets Lee Ming.Jack and Doc explain the situation and ask for Cockney’s help.He is reluctant to get involved when he hears that thepolice are searching for the trio.Just then, one of Cockney’s men brings in the unconscious body of the
shooter, who turns out to be Max, the enemy agent who shot the farmer in the hay
wagon.They learn that two more men
got away from the back of the saloon.Finally,
Cockney agrees to help get the party across the bay to San Francisco.He opens a trap door in the floor to reveal a motor launch.

ANNOUNCER:It’s three o’clock on a sloppy, fog-drenched morning in a motor
launch on San Francisco Bay, somewhere off Fisherman’s Wharf.

DOC:I don’t know which is worse --- the wet or the dark.It’s sort of like taking a tub bath in a black-out with your clothes
on.

Lefty, the launch driver, cuts the
engines to allow the boat to drift into the wharf without attracting attention
from fishermen or others who might be around at that hour of the morning.The three travelers disembark, thanking Lefty, who quietly moves the
launch into the darkened waters.

After reaching the street, Jack, Doc,
and Lee Ming search unsuccessfully for a taxi to take them to the girl’s home
in Chinatown.They spot an
all-night café, and Jack decides to phone for a cab from there. They are the only
customers.

Doc orders coffee, while
Lee Ming goes into the ladies’ room to avoid being observed.Jack and Doc chat at length with the waitress, who suddenly sees three
men looking through the café windows.Jack
tells her to act like she doesn’t know they are there, to take the empty
dishes into the kitchen, snap off the main light system, and crawl under the
kitchen table "...and STAY THERE!”

Frightened, the waitress does as she is
told and moves quickly into the kitchen.

JACK
(quietly):Doc, stay at the counter
just like you are until the lights go out.Then, get down on your hands and knees and crawl behind the
counter.

The lights go out.They hear the sound of 3 or 4 quick gun shots, and the shattering of
window glass.

Jack and Doc remain crouched behind the
counter of the all-night café.After
the gun shots and brokenwindow glass, no further
sound or movement is heard outdoors.There is the quiet sound of a fork scraping on a plate.

JACK:Doc, what are you doing?

DOC:Cuttin’ myself a piece of cake.

JACK
(disgusted):For the love of….Do
you always have to be feeding your face?

DOC:Well, you don’t expect a guy to lie behind a lunch counter with all
this here food stacked around him!

JACK:I don’t know why I don’t get me a side-kick that thinks about
something else once in a while besides food and women!

DOC:But, Jack…what else IS there?

After waiting patiently for several
minutes, the two decide to go to one of the broken café windows to seize one of
their attackers.As they peek
outside, they see a body on the sidewalk.A
voice is heard….a voice with a Chinese dialect.

VOICE:You do not see me, but I am here.

DOC:Who said that?

VOICE:I, of the family of Wong.I
am here to help you.

Jack and Doc determine that the other
two attackers are still by the café door and the other window.Doc goes to get a terrified Lee Ming out of hiding in the ladies’ room.

After talking with Wong in Chinese,Lee Ming is fearful, as she does not
know him or his family.The three
carefully exit through the broken window.After
the group evades the remaining two assailants, Wong tells them to follow him
across a vacant lot to his vegetable wagon, where they can make their escape.

They do so, but Wong spots three men in the shadows around the wagon.Wong then sneaks them silently down a street to a Chinese
market.As they descend into the
dark cellar, someone grabs the girl.

LEE
MING (screaming):“Help!Don’t
let them…oh, no….please, please!”

MUSIC:(Organ, “Valse Triste”)

EPISODE10(September 12, 1951)

SOUND:
(Clock strikes Four)

ANNOUNCER:Four o’clock in the dead of a fog-drenched morning in the sub-basement
of a Chinese market on the outer fringe of Chinatown, somewhere on Stockton
Street.Jack and Doc have lost Lee Ming.After conducting the young Chinese girl to within the very shadow of her
home, Number Two,Tay
Alley, she was snatched from under their very noses.It was brought about by an awkward, shambling Chinese of the family of
Wong.He allegedly was guiding them
by a secret route that took them down beneath this Chinese grocery.Suddenly, in the darkness, active oriental hands shoved the two men aside
and Lee Ming’s cries for help were muffled and lost behind silent doors in the
under passage.For an hour Jack and
Doc hunted desperately.

DOC:Hey, Jack….where you at?

JACK:This way, Doc…

DOC:A feller could lose his life easy in this tangle of passages and
stuff….

JACK:Where’d that last passage lead you?

DOC:Dead-end, jes’ like all the others….

JACK:Yeah, I thought so.

Doc goes into a tirade, blaming themselves for Lee Ming’s capture and their failure to find her.
While Doc is berating their own incompetence as detectives, Jack ponders their
situation.As they leave the
cellar, Jack sees a hotel….a flop-house a half-block away.But the two decide to return to Wong’s vegetable wagon to
question the men staking it out.

DOC:Jack, I been thinking. If Wong is on the other side, why’d he guide us
away from the wagon?Why didn’t
he let us walk right into the trap?

JACK:I think it was a set-up.He
was pretending to take us to the safety of the wagon and all the time intended
we should go to the cellar.The
wagon set-up was planted to make us sure he was on our side.

Upon reaching the vegetable wagon, Jack
diverts one of the guards while Doc “whams” him.The twocarry the man back to the flop-house,
where they can question him in the light and in safety.They carry the man inside and up the stairs, where the
landlady appears.She is reluctant
to give a room to the two men carrying a “drunk” but soon relents on their
paying her 75 cents rent.

Jack and Doc put the man on the floor,
tie his feet securely, and throw water on him to wake him up. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door.

Wong and several companions burst into the room.Outnumbered,the two detectives allow Wong to
handcuff them.

JACK:Wong, I don’t believe you are a traitor to your people, to your
friends.

WONG
(angrily):I am not the
traitor….It is YOU who are traitors!I
hope you are prepared to die!

DOC:Phooey on that stuff!The
bullet ain’t been made yet with my number on it.

WONG
(snarls):We do not use
bullet…..we prefer hatchet!

MUSIC:(Organ,“Valse Triste”)

So ends week two, episodes 6 through 10.

The final 5 episodes,#11 to 15 from the third week of this "lost"
story, follows.